I’m Luke DiStefano and I’ll be helping Mark with the newsletter for a while. I’m a student at The College of New Jersey majoring in Journalism & Professional Writing, with a minor in Creative Writing. Outside of this newsletter, I am the Nation & World editor at The Signal newspaper, and I am a published poet—with my poetry collection “the gentlemen gallery” available on Amazon.
On this episode of The Journalism Salute, Mark Simon spoke to Julie Eisenberg and Babette Hogan, the filmmakers behind Running for the Mountains, a new documentary film about environmental policies, politics and the fight between activists and politicians about this issue in West Virginia.
The film is available to stream now on Kanopy if you have a library card, and is available for rent on Amazon Prime.
The documentary details the story of how money and politics can corrupt one another—in a way that can often affect us nationwide. It tells this cautionary tale with an intentional disregard for party lines, by exposing a series of reckless policies that dominate West Virginia, and are now being exported to the rest of the nation.
“The filmmakers’ 15 year investigation unveils the ties between extractive industries and West Virginia's politicians who place their personal profit over the health and well being of their constituents by subjecting their state to deadly toxic air, water and land. Running for the Mountains questions West Virginia’s saga of patriotic sacrifice, while delivering surprising undercover scenes that make clear who these politicians are serving and who pays the cost of these devastating priorities. The policies of this one deregulated state affect us all,” says the documentary's website.
Running for the Mountains as a project speaks to many issues within both our society and journalism, however the part that interests me is simply the creative process that goes into creating a piece of what some may call advocacy journalism such as this one (though I should note though when Mark brought up the term advocacy journalism, Julie felt it more appropriate to describe it as trying to “spotlight either a cause or a person that doesn’t usually have access to the spotlight and letting that story come into the light” and Babette said similar).
Projects such as this, simply by virtue of sheer scale and weight of investigative reporting, calls to mind other journalism juggernauts, like one classic I’ve studied at TCNJ, Frank Sinatra Has a Cold, a profile written about the titular singer which aimed to expose some of the more corrupt aspects of his celebrity.
This is not to say there’s much similarities between the material, far from it, but with stories that are this hard-hitting there are often many micro-decisions that a reporter must navigate when piecing together these narratives that others are trying to bury.
For example, according to the documentary’s website “in 2008, Northern California producers/directors Julie Eisenberg and Babette Hogan determined that they would tell a political story about America.”
As evidenced by this, Running for the Mountains reveals a reality about journalism and those larger stories that create real systemic change: uncovering the truth takes time. Sometimes a lot of it.
“Ours potentially had no end. There’s still the temptation to keep following up because pipelines are still being dug and people are still doing shady things. But you have to pick an end,” said Julie.
Oftentimes, as journalists, the stories that matter most are told only following many unforeseen obstacles and delays. There are many types of truths we are called to platform, but the most damning ones, the most controversial ones, will always be the hardest to dig up. It’s the difficult reality of the job, that the most hard-hitting stories will always have someone who has a vested interest in preventing it from getting out.
So sometimes these pieces take awhile, and sometimes that’s longer than we’d like. This naturally reveals another aspect of journalism, which is that given the tight deadlines many stories have, perfectionism is not only impartial, but also deadly to a hard-hitting story.
As Babette said when Mark asked about advice for aspiring documentary filmmakers who have only an idea and nothing else. “Don’t let being perfect get in the way of you beginning to tell a story, at least collecting information because you don’t know where you’re gonna end up. At least not in this kind of documentary.”
Babette’s Salute:
Chris Hayes of MS Now. “Thank you Chris, for not carrying the corporate voice.”
Julie’s Salute:
“My mind did go quickly to photojournalism, and photojournalists of the past. Like the ones who really brought things to light: Dorothea Lang, Gordon Parks, and Sebastião Salgado. In terms of documentary filmmakers, Josh Fox (made) Gasland. Gasland came out while we were making our film and was an important film to look at.”
A reminder to professors and teachers
You can find episode guides that you can use if you wish to integrate the podcast within your classroom. There are more than 50 available (including one for this episode). Each one has suggested questions for discussion and activities a class can do.
I’m also happy to help you find an episode that would be appropriate for what you’re teaching. Reach out to me at [email protected].
Upcoming episodes
Very excited about my guest lineup. Next week’s guest is Alyssa Rosenberg, former letters and community editor at The Washington Post, who talked about what a letters editor does when she makes a promise to readers … and then gets 21,000 letters on The Post’s non-endorsement of a presidential candidate in 2024 (she wrote about this for NOTUS).
Upcoming guests after Alyssa include Megan Tagami, an education reporter for Honolulu Civil Beat and Samantha Donndelinger, investigative journalist and lead designer for Uncloseted Media, a new project that covers LGBTQ issues.
And while you’re waiting for them, check out my website, which has all the episodes categorized.
